Evo-Stik Southern Premier

Hayes & Yeading United 1

Cirencester Town 1

A BATTLING away performance from a young Cirencester side against a huge Hayes & Yeading outfit earned the Centurions a valuable away point to take them out of the bottom four.

Town were without suspended duo Mat Liddiard and Alfie Kilgour and blooded a brand new centre back combination in Ben Brown and Development player Robbie James.

It was a true baptism of fire for the pair as Hayes boasted at least three players over 6' 5" tall including central striker Melford Simpson. Fortunately Simpson is not too clever on the deck and Brown and James coped well with the threat.

The first half was end-to-end with the home side pressing and Cirencester counter attacking but on the stroke of half-time Hayes & Yeading opened the scoring after they were awarded a penalty kick.

Town's Kieren Diaz-Benitez, who had enjoyed a good first half in both attack and defence, was always playing catch up as a Hayes striker raced into the box and the front man went down a little easily under challenge.

Olu Durojaiye struck the spot kick inside the left post as Harvey Rivers dived in the opposite direction.

Hayes began the second half positively but Cirencester held on and soon after Rivers had pulled off his best save of the match the visitors equalised in the 65th minute.

A cross-field move found Ollie Knight in space and he drove to the side of the penalty area before clipping a cross towards the back post. Home 'keeper Louis Wells got his hand to it but it dropped near the right post where Aidan Bennett prodded it home from two yards.

The game became cut and thrust thereafter and with 15 minutes remaining Cirencester nearly took the lead when a superb Bennett header looked destined for the top right corner until Wells intervened to push it over his crossbar.

Cirencester finished the game strongly as Hayes tired but were unable to add to their score.

Cirencester Town: Rivers, Diaz-Benitez, Scheving, Brown, James, Connolly, Langworthy, Mortimer-Jones, Bennett, Chilekwa, Knight. Subs: Youngsam, Elcock, Lloyd, Griffin.